Saturday, March 19, 2005

Cease militarizing the globe! See instead the world as an interconnected family of liberal societies that is trying to settle differences by reason — BUT stop trying to prevent us from selling hi-tech arms to big Communist China to threaten tiny democratic Taiwan.

John Rosenthal points us to some of the many problems there are with the EU constitution bill of goods. The most amazing of which is that some people are actually asserting that it’s an American Plot. Hey! Stop laughing back there – they’re SERIOUS!

«The first is the treaty's alleged "neo-liberal" inspiration, i.e. inasmuch as "neo-liberalism" in this style of discourse is essentially reduced to the connotation of free trade and free trade is supposed to be either the cardinal sin of "the American way of life" or the secret weapon for establishing American hegemony or (confusedly) both. The claim that the treaty is "neo-liberal" in inspiration rests on a myth. The European Union has never constituted a free trade area and there is nothing in the "constitutional treaty" that will make it be one in the future. »Good Grief.

Imposing notions of "sustainable development" and it's close cousin "starvation" seems to be the focus of yet another EU boondoggle of euphemisms and circumloquation. "What's the role of business in the modern world?" asks the Brussels Encyclical...

Maybe in my drunken stupor I just didn't notice this, but Mean Mr. Mustard, the only admitted non-fruitcake at Berkeley, is back in the blog-a-drome. He even lives in a co-op called "Casa Zimbabwe." Mugabe is sure to show up any day now and to whack somebody, I'm sure.

In the Le Figaro article in which he takes on France's embrace of state intervention and the status quo, Ivan Rioufol points out the obvious (was it ever in doubt?): that the "Arab spring" has given the lie to the canard that "democracy cannot be decreed, cannot be exported with guns and violence" …White House adviser to Bush(just in case you didn't recognize him):Clausewitz: Never out of fashion!

Go to Google.com, type in the search phrase "World Trade Center conspiracy" and you'll get links to an estimated 628,000 Web sites. More than 3000 books on 9/11 have been published; many of them reject the official consensus that hijackers associated with Osama bin Laden and Al Qaeda flew passenger planes into U.S. landmarks.

Healthy skepticism, it seems, has curdled into paranoia. Wild conspiracy tales are peddled daily on the Internet, talk radio and in other media. Blurry photos, quotes taken out of context and sketchy eyewitness accounts have inspired a slew of elaborate theories: The Pentagon was struck by a missile; the World Trade Center was razed by demolition-style bombs; Flight 93 was shot down by a mysterious white jet. As outlandish as these claims may sound, they are increasingly accepted abroad and among extremists here in the United States.

To investigate 16 of the most prevalent claims made by conspiracy theorists, POPULAR MECHANICS assembled a team of nine researchers and reporters who, together with PM editors, consulted more than 70 professionals in fields that form the core content of this magazine, including aviation, engineering and the military.

Friday, March 18, 2005

American are so sick of hearing Leftist Canadians lecturing Americans, as well as Americans leftists lecturing Americans and using Canada as their cudgel, that they are no longer ignoring the ninny-palooza and starting to write outburst such as this one:

In fact, largely as a result of Bush and his foreign policy, what was once a polite rivalry has become a poisoned well of hurt feelings and recriminations.

These days, Canadian publications are chockablock with surveys showing that Canadians see themselves as something akin to a superior race.

Americans can still expect two things from the European public and its leadership: deep-seeded anti-Americanism and embarrassing contradictions. In that context, let us examine all the recent Eurobabble

writes Victor Davis Hanson (thanks to Greg Schreiber) as he quotes 10 examples of Eurospeak and its double standards.

Don't dare divide us into old and new! We speak with one voice from Warsaw to Lisbon. We aim to be as united as your states are in America — BUT help us to ensure that Europe has separate U.N. Security Council seats for Britain, France, and, we hope, Germany as well.

Stop using force to solve problems! Listen to our diplomats. Promote international courts. The world no longer works according to your silly laws of military power and deterrence — BUT don't dare take any more American troops out of Germany.

Stay in NATO! You are pledged to the collective defense of Europe — BUT get used to the fact that we will soon have a new and rival independent EU military force.

Pay attention to the Muslim world! Hear us who have more experience with the Middle East. Try to incorporate, rather than isolate, the "other" — BUT stop telling us that we have to let Turkey into the EU.

Cease militarizing the globe! See instead the world as an interconnected family of liberal societies that is trying to settle differences by reason — BUT stop trying to prevent us from selling hi-tech arms to big Communist China to threaten tiny democratic Taiwan.

Learn from our more humane culture! See how our short work week, cradle-to-grave entitlements, and pacifism promote well-being — BUT how exactly do you rich and powerful Americans do all that you do?

Remember that we are your critical partners in the war against terrorism! Appreciate our unheralded work that goes unnoticed amid the loud bombs and tanks of you rowdy Americans — BUT Hezbollah is not a terrorist organization and cannot be labeled as such (and Hamas isn't either and needs our financial support).

Sign Kyoto! Start acting like good global citizens! BUT quit suggesting we had a hand in the Rwanda mess, the Balkans mess, the Oil-for-Food Mess, the Saddam-reactor mess, the Hezbollah/Hamas mess, the Arafat mess...

Quit proceeding unilaterally! Refer events that affect the world to the U.N. Don't just act on your own as if your deeds don't affect others — BUT don't remember the Falklands, the Ivory Coast, the unification of Germany, or the oil deals with Saddam.

Don't tamper in the Middle East! Do you cowboys realize what madness you are unleashing? BUT if you succeed we might just stop our caricatures — IF democracy follows and we can take credit for and profit from it.

It pains me to say it, it really does. But the fact is that in so many areas and walks and ways of life, the United States is now a better country than Canada

writes Michael Coren in the Toronto Sun. Replace Canada/Canadien throughout with Germany/Germans, France/French, Great Britain/Britons, suggests FR Hoffmann, and see if Coren's comment doesn't fit equally for these countries.

There, I've said it. Because I'm so very tired of the way, particularly in the last two years, that we Canadians have come to define ourselves not by who we are but by who we are not.

…With a malodorous stew of ignorance and malice, [publicly funded mediocrities screaming abuse at a great and noble nation] pump Canada at the expense of deflating the United States.

They say that we are about peace and they are about war. Nonsense. We haven't been able to keep the peace for years even if we'd wanted to do so. We haven't the aircraft or the equipment. It's the Americans who send most of the aid and keep most of the peace.

They say we are informed and intelligent, they are insular and foolish. Harvard, Yale, Princeton and a plethora of world-class universities. Nobel Prize winners by the dozen, internationally renowned scientists, scholars and sages. Goodness me, they even produce better anti-Americans than we do.

They say we are sophisticated, they are dumb. Yet they have more symphony orchestras, more theatres, more libraries, more museums per head than we do in Canada.

They say we are free, they are not. Really? Take the example of Fox News. For years this right-of-centre network was barred from Canadian airwaves, while we publicly funded left-of-centre equivalents such as the CBC. …

They say we have diversity and wit in our press, while they have conformity and lack of style. Yet every American city has a number of impressive daily newspapers and most small towns have weekly publications. They have liberal and conservative, religious and secular, black and white.

They have wide and different ownership, a multitude of different and contrary expression, the right to say almost anything, the liberty to question authority, the expectation of argument and debate, the protection of the basic right to speak one's mind.

Bashers of the U.S. say we have the separation of church and state while they have too much religion. The truth is that they have a constitutional requirement to separate church and state but allow religion to have its place in the public square, thus giving voice to so many brilliant and ethical people.

We effectively silence people of faith, lie to and about them and insult the very ideas that founded Canada itself. We stifle talk of moral behaviour in the name of morality. We deny the difference between right and wrong and then condemn people as being wrong if they disagree.

We say we are mature and they are childish. Which shows just how immature we are and how much growing up we need to do.

Time to put away the toys of smugness and conceit and make our own way in the world. With or without a government grant.

Less than 10% of the responses were critical, but they were a lesson in themselves. In all honesty, not one of them managed to disagree with me without being abusive. …

We flatter ourselves into a false sense of grandeur by flippant assumptions of our own tolerance and liberalism. Yet the enforcement of secular humanism is not tolerance at all but in itself a genuine form of fundamentalism.

[One of my critics] disagrees with me but instead of simply saying this, as if [sic] her perfect right and democratic duty, she tries to marginalize and insult the messenger rather than deal in any substantive manner with the message.

An e-mail warrior and Canadian nationalist named Mark told me I was a "collaborationist, double-crossing fifth columnist, fraternizer, quisling, saboteur, security risk, subversive traitor, treasonous turncoat, two-timing quisling." and added for good measure: "Don't let the door hit your ass on the way out."

Not once but twice a quisling! Goodness me, I'm as bad as the Norwegian fascist who sold his country to the Nazis because I wrote that the United States is not the ugly bully so many Canadians make it out to be.

All this silliness aside, the irony is that my critics simply did not appreciate that the hurt they felt at having their country criticized might just be shared by Americans when far worse things, with far less foundation, are said about the U.S. by Canadian leaders on a regular basis.

Another constant characteristic of the negative letters was the sheer anger. Dozens of people told me, in no uncertain terms, to go to the United States. But surely a Canadian has a right to appreciate another country and critique his own. …

Conclusion? The chauvinistic neurosis of the Canadian liberal is in many ways even more repugnant than the insularity of some Americans.

Davids Medienkritik make a prescient point which might be mistitled. It may not be so much about hurt feelings, but about a public temperament.

«Germans revere Saint Florian as the patron saint of firefighters and offer a prayer to him that goes “Holy Saint Florian, spare my house and burn my neighbor's.” This prayer is an accurate description of Chancellor’s Schroeder’s foreign policy and is held by most Germans as a valid approach to the war on terror.»

«Germans are no longer keen to point out that their sentiments are just anti-Bush, not anti-American. The steady diet of television documentaries and news articles over alleged American wrong doing from World War II to Iraq is a sign of a new German attitude. German media use every opportunity to remind the country there is a global scapegoat for the future while proclaiming moral equivalence for its past. The German media have spoken - GM is responsible for the decline of Opel - Dresden was the same as the holocaust. And Chancellor Schroeder remains silent.»

Hey there, hydrogen fans and fanettes, here’s a newsflash if you haven’t already thought it through: the only natural source of it is in natural gas, otherwise you have to pummel huge amounts of energy at a water molecule to unbound it from the oxygen, and then turn H into H2.

True, hydrogen is the most common element in he universe; it’s so plentiful that the sun consumes 600 million tons of it every second. But unlike oil, vast reservoirs of hydrogen don’t exist here on Earth. Instead, hydrogen atoms are bound up in molecules with other elements, and we must expend energy to extract the hydrogen so it can be used in fuel cells. We’ll never get more energy out of hydrogen than we put into it.

Perform electrolysis with renewable energy, such as solar or wind power, and you eliminate the pollution issues associated with fossil fuels and nuclear power. Trouble is, renewable sources can provide only a small fraction of the energy that will be required for a full-fledged hydrogen economy.

Since it’s significantly less efficient in terms of energy that fossil fuels are, where then is the appeal? Oh, that’s right… they get to force on people an agrarian existence when people lived in huts, starved to death, and died of dental problems… It’s made to suit by global village idiots who are usually against “globalization”, want to give your kids dystopian nightmares, and are against jet travel unless it’s their fact-finding junkets.Keep cranking out those bad ideas lefty... you'll starve your followers soon enough!

Adventures in sour feelings with the Berlin Aspen Institute with the Weekly Standard:

«My interlocutors--who on other subjects had wide-ranging views--all emphatically greed on one thing: Bush should stop talking about "freedom." Several people had counted the times our president had used the F-word. They noted that Chancellor Gerhard Schröder had avoided using it at all. The Germans prefer "stability" to disturbing the status quo by trying to spread "freedom."»

Typical megalomaniacal desire to regulate and control things they don't understand, and won't let private citizens do anything about... At least they have an occasional critic:

"Monti is of the opinion that "the French debate is wrong", and that "the debate is limited to France and Germany". Moreover, he stated that competition could facilitate, rather than prevent, merger and acquisition activity across European borders. Indeed, in his view, markets do open up and only a few mergers have been turned down by the Commission.

Monti's colleague Frits Bolkestein expressed similar views. In a recent article in the Financial Times, he attacked France and Germany for their approach to industrial policy, saying that the two governments used current fears about deindustrialisation as an excuse to reinforce state interventionism "

“These organizations represent themselves as mainstream, even as they continue to embrace the Brotherhood's radical views and maintain links to terrorists. With moderate rhetoric and well-spoken German, Dutch, and French, they have gained acceptance among European governments and media alike. Politicians across the political spectrum rush to engage them whenever an issue involving Muslims arises or, more parochially, when they seek the vote of the burgeoning Muslim community.

But, speaking Arabic or Turkish before their fellows Muslims, they drop their facade and embrace radicalism. While their representatives speak about interfaith dialogue and integration on television, their mosques preach hate and warn worshippers about the evils of Western society. While they publicly condemn the murder of commuters in Madrid and school children in Russia, they continue to raise money for Hamas and other terrorist organizations.”

The BBC has been touting this “killing of science” tale which isn’t panning out in the least. Their theory is that medical science and science in general is being snuffed by visa requirements put in place by the US after 9-11. I guess they think that it’s the US’ obligation to produce much of the advanced science in the world, and if anyone dies of an exotic disease for which there is no cure yet, then it must George Bush’s fault. They repeated an awful and fact free documentary, put it online, and are spreading it around wherever they can for maximum guilt-tripping.

I only exaggerate somewhat. They were pretty clear in their assertion that some sort of imagined stifling of science will kill people worldwide. Hardly! I though the US was so greedy that they didn’t help any soul to begin with.

Their assertion falls apart everywhere you look:

“PoliSci: Scientists still prefer U.S.By DEE ANN DIVIS, Senior Science & Technology EditorWASHINGTON, March 14 (UPI) -- Some of the largest booths on the exhibit floor at the recent annual meeting of the American Association for the Advancement of Science were hosted by European organizations touting their research and employment opportunities.Recruiters working on both sides of the Atlantic, however, say Europe has a long way to go before it can overcome legal, business and cultural problems that hamstring its efforts to attract scientists and continue to drive the brightest European minds to the United States and elsewhere.”

Irked by harsh news coverage of legislative perquisites, the European Parliament's leadership has quietly proposed tough restrictions to bar the photographing or filming of members when they are not involved in official duties at the institution's sprawling headquarters

…earlier in February, the German weekly television magazine Stern filmed members after they had signed for daily allowances, which have drawn intense scrutiny as some legislators have left work immediately after jotting their signatures.

… Regulations allow journalists to take pictures in news conferences and public passages. Legislators can also grant permission to be filmed within their own offices.

But the proposed rules also grant broad powers to the Quaestors to establish temporary zones that are inaccessible to reporters and to bar violators at their discretion.

That potential power worries Jens-Peter Bonde, a Danish member of Parliament and the leader of a 36-member independent group of legislators from 10 countries.

Bonde said the new rules emerged because some members of Parliament "hate it that they're taking photos when they're collecting benefits from the gravy train."

"It's been an ongoing battle for years, he said. "When we have a scandal, the first reaction is not to change the reality, but to change the possibility for making stories about it."

To admirers of Sartre, though, what remains is perhaps more important. Conceding that Sartre's image was still not fixed, Annie Cohen-Solal, author of a well-received biography of Sartre, said she preferred to view him more as "a role model, a way of doing things, than a doctrine or a body of work." And as such, she added, he remains "an ethical compass."

Michel Winock, co-author of the Dictionary of French Intellectuals, said Sartre's "taste for the subversive" led him to both political misjudgments and positions which to this day appear legitimate. As for what survives of Sartre, Winock told Le Nouvel Observateur: "I would say above all his moral coherence: his absolute refusal to be resigned in the face of injustice."

Thus concludes Alan Riding's article on Jean-Paul Sartre, "the existentialist philosopher, the political activist whose positions frequently changed and the intellectual celebrity who won headlines as a Left Bank ambassador to the likes of Mao Zedong, Fidel Castro and Yugoslavia's Marshal Tito".

While Sartre was wrong on a number of issues (being a fellow traveler of the French Communist Party and supporting French Maoists), the International Herald Tribune writer says, on other issues (colonialism, Vietnam) he was right on the money.

What I retain mostly from Sartre, though, is this: the "role model" never wavered in his opposition to Uncle Sam and capitalism (plus ça change…); and "the ethical compass" who refused "to be resigned in the face of injustice" never seems to have been very vocal when the protest would put himself in an uncomfortable situation — i.e., the existentialist did not make use of "the only thing that permits a man to live" when, and where, it mattered most.

Indeed,

Sartre tried to explain his thought in simple phrases. "Existentialism defines man through his action." "The only thing that permits a man to live is the act." "A man engages in his life, defines his profile and, outside this profile, he is nothing." Put simply, every human being determines his or her destiny.

It followed that Sartre, for one, should be politically engaged, although, until the liberation of Paris in Aug. 1944, this had not been his posture. He played no role in the turbulent politics of France's 1930s. He visited Berlin in late 1933 and did not recognize the Nazi menace. And after a few months as a prisoner of war, he cheerfully he put on plays and published books in German-occupied Paris.

And while we are on the subject of Vietnam (you will remember that the war was "won" by "the Vietnamese", by "the people of Vietnam"), Bill Bainbridge has this:

When 600 overseas Vietnamese landed at Ho Chi Minh City's airport on Jan. 23, they were welcomed by an official delegation and a phalanx of eager young volunteers who insisted on carrying their bags for them.

It was a far cry from the way most of them left the country in the 1970s, on leaky boats and being cursed as traitors by the government in Hanoi. …

LibérationPropagandaStaffel is unhappy with the film 'Team America' because it roughs up the French favorite Michael Moore. Libération CEO Serge July is back from his Baghdad luxury hotel where he fought bravely to terminate the contract of the French journalist currently embedded with local terrorists.

Chiraq has gone for the bait. Once again, France proves that it doesn't have a plan (or a clue) and only moves by reaction. Chiraq now is calling for a Virtual European Library (which will be at least as virtual as Europe is) in response to Google's vast digitalisation project (15 million books online). Look for Zeropean taxpayers suckers to foot the bill. Anyone who wants to check out French expertise with regards to online libraries has only to check out the Gallica site (a measly 80,000 scanned books with an iffy online search engine and an interface pasted together that serves up some Acrobat files. Talk about 'turd world' handywork!).

"A more dishonest and demented person I have never met," Michael Moore's former manager told Kathleen Antrim, "and I have known a few! And he is more money obsessed than any I have known, and that's saying a lot."

Moore is the only client that Douglas Urbanski, a critically acclaimed 25-year veteran of the entertainment industry, has ever fired.

Iranian revolutionary guards (irregulars/non-army religious police types) are reportedly bringing the hizballah arms including tanks, and are reinforcing some positions in Lebanon (probably in the Bekaa) abandoned by syrian troops and intelligence units

writes Jo N, who wonders what is French Fregoli's take on this…

I'm beginning to think that iran will be the poland of 2006. Will there be a popular uprising like the Solidarity movement? It's looking quite possible that they'll have a long burning revolution inspired by Beirut and a buildup that's been going on for about a year in the population.

It turns out that people across iran have been protesting like mad in small groups in localities for the past 36 hours. They have this Zoroastrian thing that they do at the New Year celebrations which officially start on 21 March, and it slightly pagan. It's always been criticized by the clergy. This year people are taking the impetus to protest. Women are burning headscarves, people are throwing pictures of clerics into these little symbolic fires they build. The idea is that they jump over the burning bush to start out the year purified.

The Madrid bombings gave the Islamists what they wanted: a change in government and the withdrawal of Spanish troops from Iraq. So what do they want now?

I'm sure there are a lot of informed people in Spain who could enlighten us about this, but of course they have to be asked.

Indeed, given what Elaine Sciolino reports from Madrid ("the Spanish police continue to uncover and thwart new plots involving Islamic militants" and "officials estimate that there are hundreds of people scattered in cells around the country committed to attacking centers of power in Spain"), even more pertinent questions that she might have asked (if only herself) might have been

To what extent was it wrong to conclude that the Madrid bombings were the result of Aznar's decision to support the Bush administration's 'crimes' in Iraq, Afghanistan, and elsewhere?; and

To what extent was it demagoguery or irresponsible wishful thinking — not to imitate the left's vocabulary and call it an outright lie — to suggest that pulling out Spain's troops would bring about an end to Islamic attacks as well as goodwill from the country's Islamic population?

Of all the unsavory aspects of French police going around the country busting orchestras and locking up their conductors or managers, it is the notion that it's being done to protect these innocent violin-playing lambs from Sofia that drips heaviest with irony. In common with price-fixing cartels the world 'round, France and Germany's high-priced musicians have only one interest in this affair, and that is keeping low-priced competition off the market. That this means smallish French towns get no opera, or get it only when heavy public subsidies are made available for it, concerns them not at all.

What's more, it's reasonable to assume, as Mr. Miller does, that productions such as the "Don Giovanni" he was conducting "make the French economy turn a little faster than it would otherwise." The musicians stay in hotels and spend money; stage crews are put to work on the shows, and others may find incremental work on the peripheries of tours such as these. But all that is as nothing, it seems, compared to the need to protect the privileged position of France's domestic musicians.

Whether it is the unions themselves that are responsible for the crackdown, as Messrs. Miller and Hartung suspect, or the impetus comes from elsewhere inside France's lumbering bureaucracy, the story is a microcosm of economic and cultural protectionism that is looking increasingly tenuous in an expanding Europe and globalizing world. When it comes to its language, its cinema, and now its music, France has long stood athwart history crying "Stop!" In two months' time, Mr. Miller is returning to France with a production of "La Traviata." Will the French police let the fat lady sing?

With regards to the Europeans' contention that there is no evil (what a silly notion), and if only clueless Americans could be made to understand that, the whole world would come together as one, let us remember that today is the birthday of James Madison, the president (1751-1836) who said

If men were angels, no government would be necessary.

With regards to whole societies in Europe uniting (in France it has been call l'union sacrée) against the danger of the clueless, bumbling, retrograde, and war-mongering Yanks:

It is a universal truth that the loss of liberty at home is to be charged to the provisions against danger, real or pretended, from abroad.

With regards to Europe's mainstream media uniting to give the stamp of approval to their governments' self-serving contention that it is all America's (or Bush's) fault:

Knowledge will forever govern ignorance; and a people who mean to be their own governors must arm themselves with the power which knowledge gives.

Moreover:

It will be of little avail to the people that the laws are made by men of their own choice if the laws be so voluminous that they cannot be read, or so incoherent that they cannot be understood.

A well regulated militia, composed of the body of the people, trained in arms, is the best most natural defense of a free country.

Do not separate text from historical background. If you do, you will have perverted and subverted the Constitution, which can only end in a distorted, bastardized form of illegitimate government.

I believe there are more instances of the abridgement of freedom of the people by gradual and silent encroachments by those in power than by violent and sudden usurpations.

Learned Institutions ought to be favorite objects with every free people. They throw that light over the public mind which is the best security against crafty and dangerous encroachments on the public liberty.

Perhaps not for scores of millions of Arabs. But if George Bush is proven right on Iraq, and more than a bit responsible for the Arab Spring of shaky political advances now shimmering from Egypt to Saudi Arabia, then it's a frightening development and delegitimizing situation for European politicians from Spain to Germany.

They are pols like Gerhard Schröder and José Luis Rodríguez Zapatero who essentially won election by running against Bush and the Iraq war. Leaving the talk of freedom or jihadist terrorism to the yahoos, they have linked their futures to what they supposed would be the eternal vote-cornucopia of resistance to Bush's vision for the Middle East.

Adding France and Belgium, the group widens to include governments that hoped to leverage their stance on Bush and the war into a genesis myth for a Europe redefining itself as America's counterweight.

Until the elections in Iraq, in this view, Europe's wishful identity as both moral superpower and tower of wisdom had been demonstrated to the world through Bush's headfirst dive into the hopeless Middle East. In the minds of the Zapateros and Schröders, Europe's place as the Righteous Power had become so self-evident recently that in planning to end its embargo on arms sales to China, Europe could proceed with the single near-comic argument that Beijing's rulers felt discriminated against.

Now, things are happening that suggest the start of a change in European mind-set in the zone where the Bush administration usually was called dumb and dangerous.

… Could this be European revisionism on Bush? In any event, when it comes to movement in the Middle East, Laurent Murawiec, a French security affairs expert, wrote that progress certainly wasn't the work of the Holy Ghost or "the very French strategy based for so long on not 'isolating' terrorist killers" like Hezbollah.

The newspaper Le Monde, whose headline asked if Bush was to thank for the flicker of hopefulness in the Arab world, published a reply from official but unnamed French voices. Naturally, they said, France couldn't deny the power of American influence and military presence in the region, but instead they insisted the winds of change did not emanate from the war in Iraq, where little was yet resolved.

In this version, the advances in the Israel-Palestinian conflict yielded no credit to Bush for his refusal to deal with Yasser Arafat; or, indeed, introspection about the years of diligent French support for him. Rather, Bush's essential Middle East contribution had been pressuring Israel to enter talks with the Palestinians again.

Such is the region through French theoretical eyes. In fact, events have made France something of an American ward on the Lebanon-Syria issue, a situation that tacitly gives Bush his due more meaningfully than anything France could say.

When the Syrians pushed Jacques Chirac's intimate friend, Rafik Hariri, out of power in Lebanon, the gesture signified to the Middle East that French protection or practical leverage there meant little or nothing. To respond to this affront, and to jab at its former friends in Syria, France enlisted the Bush administration last fall to produce a joint Security Council resolution calling for the immediate withdrawal of Syrian forces from Lebanon.

Then came Hariri's assassination a month ago. Because it refocused Arab attention on the incapacity of France to act alone in any material fashion in the region, the French hewed to the Bush line on the specifics of a Syrian pullout and supporting Lebanese democracy. On Iran's nuclear arms program, if the Americans have endorsed the European negotiating plan for now, it has come at the cost to France of a public promise to the Bush administration to help it in bringing Iran before the Security Council if the talks fail.

Unlike Schröder, Chirac has the personal luxury of staying away from immediate grief arising from the new facts. Schröder must go to the polls next year in German circumstances of disastrous unemployment and the weakest growth prospects in Europe.

Alongside that lost economic strength and the appearance of Bush-led change in the Middle East, add an increasingly ludicrous Schröder campaign boast of Germany re-emerging as a political force in the world on the basis of his opposition to the Iraq war.

Still, given a year to maneuver and Arab democratization more time to crystallize into reality, Schröder, as Europe's most facile political chameleon, might find a way to persuade his electorate that his steadfastness turned Bush into a peacemaker.

This revisionist reach is virtually impossible for Zapatero. In Spain's schoolyard of hand-on-throat politics, Zapatero seems required to inflict defeat every day on the conservative allies of his predecessor, José María Aznar, a vibrant supporter of Bush.

Saying that Bush may have gotten something right — Zapatero invited George Soros, Gary Hart and Tariq Ramadan, the Islamist political battler banned in the United States, to a conference here last week to insist that Bush hadn't — would mean the end of a domestic war Zapatero wants to continue roaring.

Tuesday, March 15, 2005

Claudia Rosett writing in the New York Sun on 15 March points out the clear contrast between the optimistic pro-democracy, pro-sovereignty movement which feels optimistic with the Hizballah reinforced Pro-Syrian faction which chants about death and tries to raise it’s tired old tirades and personal hobgoblins: Israel, Europe, the USA. Their negativism reflects the pessimism of the anti-everything, marching left in the west, and seems to be madly in love with death.

“BEIRUT - Flags fluttering, horns honking, and fingers flashing V for victory, Lebanon's opposition converged on downtown Beirut yesterday in the biggest democratic protest in the history of the modern Middle East.

Their numbers - about a million strong - were a retort to the rival protests staged last week by the terrorist group Hezbollah, and a message to each other and the world that the Lebanese people are serious in their demands for - as the crowd chanted over and over - "Freedom, Sovereignty, Independence."

In Beirut yesterday, it was clear that message has been heard. Unlike the Hezbollah demonstrators with their chants of "Death to America," many in the crowd were friendly to Americans. "Thank's Free World," (sic) said one poster, held high by a woman in a bright red jacket, Rawya Okal, who told me: "We thank Mr. Bush for his position." Overhearing this in the throng, a middle-aged man in a green baseball cap, Louis Nahanna, leaned over to say, "We love the American people" - adding, "Please don't let Bush forget us. Your support is very important."

Asking more people what they thought of Americans turned up the same refrain. From a young driver, Fadi Mrad, came the message: "We want to change. We need freedom. Please don't let Bush forget us." From a group of young men came not only the message "Our hope is America," and "We believe in democracy in the Middle East," but also praise for Deputy Secretary of Defense Paul Wolfowitz. There was also an invitation from one of them, young Edgard Baradhy, for his heroine, Ms. Rice, to come to Beirut "and I am ready to take her for coffee."

At one point, two young men sitting on a sidewalk mistook this reporter for a Frenchwoman, and called out "Vive la France!" The European nation's president, Jacques Chirac, has also come out in support of the democratic movement. When I told them that I was American, they got to their feet and came over to say, "Welcome to Lebanon.”

Never mind the fact that DW-TV is a kind of propaganda mechanism – sending any television station any sort of pap promoting tourism, flattering automobile review, or historical whitewash that they want. One item that they trotted around a few years back, even looked to promote the pristine, bucolic virtues of one of the towns where a concentration camp was located (being careful to skip that little bit of geschischte.)

The Cato Institute’s Doug Brandow asks the simplest question: Europe – Friend or Foe? The focus of his piece has largely to do with constructive engagement with China in the long term – how to do it, and how NOT to do it, and he finds simply that Europe is engaging China in such a fashion that it will building up a potential enemy, not a partner in the world.

No American or European wants to see the rise of a global hegemonic authoritarian power. Like China.

There's much good that has happened to the People's Republic of China over the last three decades. However, further liberalization is by no means guaranteed. And even a more democratic China might be aggressively nationalistic.

That wouldn't be so important if the country was Burma or Zimbabwe, two other states under a European Union arms embargo. But Beijing is likely to eventually marry the world's largest population with the largest economy.

With China, however, the differences are more significant - and could conceivably lead to war. Should conflict come, it would be in the interests of both the United States and Europe that America prevail.

The EU-implemented an arms embargo after the Chinese regime's slaughter of demonstrators in Tiananmen Square. But European firms see potential profits from servicing Beijing's growing arms wants. Some Europeans also hope to advance their goal of becoming a counterweight to America. Engagement is a better strategy than isolation for encouraging the development of a free China. However, engagement need not mean strengthening China's military. Beijing will become a significant military power with or without European arms sales.

See? We told you that Washington's ill-conceived and mistake-laden intervention would only fan the embers of hatred, drive Arabs and Muslims to unite against America, and lead to the burning of flags and widespread demonstrations against Bush's shameful foreign po — wait a minute!

After a report in a Jordanian newspaper that [Ahmed al-Banna] was responsible for the bombing on Feb. 28 in Hilla, where more than 130 people died, Iraqis erupted in anger.

On Monday, hundreds of Iraqis swarmed around the Jordanian Embassy in Baghdad, denouncing the country's leader, King Abdullah II, and defacing a Jordanian flag. A similar crowd marched in Najaf, near the home of Iraq's top Shiite religious leader, Grand Ayatollah Ali al-Sistani, who on Sunday accused Jordan of interfering in Iraq's internal affairs. The allegation has even strained official relations.

"We were surprised by the news about the family of the criminal terrorist Raad Mansur al-Banna celebrating his mean terrorist act, taking pride in that," said a statement by the office of Iraq's interim prime minister, Ayad Allawi.

The incident struck a raw nerve for Iraqis, who have been beleaguered by dozens of suicide bombings that have killed thousands of civilians. Iraqis often blame foreigners for the attacks, and neighboring countries for flooding their country with terrorists. …

In the case of Mr. Banna, the most inflammatory allegation in the Jordanian newspaper article was that his family had staged a celebration last week, inviting their countrymen to congratulate them for their son's heroic act. …

Today is the birthday of Andrew Jackson, the general and president (1767-1845) who said:

Any man worth his salt will stick up for what he believes right, but it takes a slightly better man to acknowledge instantly and without reservation that he is in error.

As long as our government is administered for the good of the people, and is regulated by their will; as long as it secures to us the rights of persons and of property, liberty of conscience and of the press, it will be worth defending.

Every good citizen makes his country's honor his own, and cherishes it not only as precious but as sacred. He is willing to risk his life in its defense and its conscious that he gains protection while he gives it.

It is a damn poor mind indeed which can't think of at least two ways to spell any word.

It is to be regretted that the rich and powerful too often bend the acts of government to their own selfish purposes.

It was settled by the Constitution, the laws, and the whole practice of the government that the entire executive power is vested in the President of the United States.

No one need think that the world can be ruled without blood. The civil sword shall and must be red and bloody.

Why is it that I think of the recent Iraq cisis, and of George W Bush (you know, the president whom the whole world opposes), when I read the following?

One man with courage makes a majority.

Take time to deliberate; but when the time for action arrives, stop thinking and go in.

Never take counsel of your fears.

Peace, above all things, is to be desired, but blood must sometimes be spilled to obtain it on equable and lasting terms.

It looks like Mr. Anthrax is at it again. From Fox News: An alarm triggered by sensors detected the presence of a chemical or biological agent at the mail delivery building around 10:30 a.m. EST, a spokesman told reporters in the morning. Officials shut down the facility. It is to remain closed for at least another day. About 175 people who work in the Pentagon's mail facility are being offered the option of antibiotics but defense officials said that by late afternoon, no one had experienced any signs or symptoms of exposure.

Just in time for the return of a truly awful formerly big hair metal band.

The Department of Defense was considerably more cautious in tone, and failed to mention heavy metal in any way. How dare they hold back!

Monday, March 14, 2005

Maureen Dowd, who truly doesn’t get it wrote in this past Sunday’s New York Times Op-ed:

“When I need to work up my nerve to write a tough column, I try to think of myself as Emma Peel in a black leather catsuit, giving a kung fu kick to any diabolical mastermind who merits it.”

Quite telling. As a editorialist she’s little more than an attacker, as a journalist she is too intellectually lazy to understand why people have the positions they do. It’s simply enough that they do. What then (if anything) was her column about? Women. Not enough of them getting editorials published. Why? It doesn’t matter. Content doesn’t matter – there just aren’t enough women doing it.

She goes on to channel some invective on men generally as some sort of cause in itself, and discusses an exchange she had with editor Howell Raines on a column she didn’t want to write, calling it a tough moment. Understood, we all have them. Her conclusion?

“Men enjoy verbal dueling.”

Hunh? I suppose her alternative or explanation or thesis of description of opposites is what she does: insult and run away, adding nothing to the depth of understanding and nothing to the discussion. There is no dueling because there is no response – only potentates and the obedient in the world of the exchange (or non-exchange) of ideas.

This mirrors exactly the intellectual skill of children before they develop useful conversation skills. The best she can do is see sharp dialog as having cutting themes to it - which leads her immediately into dwelling on the theme of castration. Again it can only go back to the male-female binary paradigm as it’s understood and controlled by the shipwreck of present day feminism: ‘I hate you, you owe me, but you guys still need to make way for me. And be polite while you’re at it’

It gets better: she chimes in on the kerfuffle between Susan Estrich and Michael Kinsley. Estrich conducted a open lobbying campaign to get Kinsley to run her columns on the editorial page. Kinsley made the editorial choice not to and stood his ground in spite of his decision being paraded to potential humiliation in the prism of a feminism shakedown: to make him seem the chauvinist.

Dowd sides with Kinsley, citing only that Estrich’s writing is hum-drum. No other reason? It hardly seems worth the reference. I actually looks like a vehicle to bring us her real news: she IS news. She refers to both Kinsley and Estrich as her friends.Again – no reason to mention it, other that to make the column’s subject less the subject, and generally about her.

President Jacques Chirac said to NATO leaders in late February that "France wants to contribute to stability" in Iraq. The contribution? Some $660,000 to a NATO fund for military and police training in Iraq and one French mid-levelofficer who's being assigned to the training mission at NATO headquarters in Brussels. Not 1,000 officers. Not 100. Just one.

France's attempt to carve out a distinct foreign policy has been distinguished by little more than rank opportunism. During the Cold War it tried to play the U.S. off against the Soviet Union, and in 1989, French President François Mitterrand even thought he could stop the steamroller of German reunification by traveling to East Germany and exhorting it to remain an independent state.

Smilarly we have this from Aeronautics.ru regarding the German committment:

Germany's decision last November to offer 3,900 soldiers for the U.S.-led war on terrorism was preceded by a wrenching national debate over the most far-reaching deployment since World War II.

More than 700 German soldiers are part of the international security force deployed in and around the Afghan capital.

Bear in mind that this grand force is a "robust" version of last years "committment" which stood at 3100, with only 305 of them actually deployed in doing anything. Quite a sacrifice for a combined population of 140 million people, don't you think?

Let’s keep this in perspective: when the anti-civilization left bandy about accusation of warmongering and pretend to care about the fate of populations in the midst of war, it’s because they never stop dreaming of violent revolution and maiming their political opponents. Think of it as a kind of "Madonna-Whore Complex" for angry kids with expensive orthodontic work.

MARX THOUGHT WAR WAS A HEALTHY INFLUENCEMarx, Engels, “The Boring War”, 1854: “Even with Europe in decay, still a war should have roused the healthy elements; a war should have awakened a lot of hidden powers, and surely so much energy would have been present among 250 million people that at least a respectable battle would have occurred, in which both parties could have reaped some honor, as much honor as courage and bravery can gain on the battlefield.”

MARX BELIEVED IN BLOODSHEDInterview with Karl Marx, Chicago Tribune, January 5 1879: "Well, then, to carry out the principles of socialism do its believers advocate assassination and bloodshed?" "No great movement," Karl answered, "has ever been inaugurated Without Bloodshed."

Filthy vermin run amok throughout Paris during the high schoolers' protest demonstration and suddenly reading LibérationPropagandaStaffel is not the same anymore.

Mohand, of Tunisian background, explains : "If you look like a good ol' French, you are a target. Even more so if you look like a long haired surfer."

"The violence was perpetrated mainly by Blacks, that makes me so ashamed", said Jennifer who is from a Guadeloupean family.

"There were 50 young thugs on one woman, explains Thomas from a high school in Essone. The riot police didn't make a move. When we went over to see them, they told us that it wasn't their job." When the crowd broke up, the orders were clear : "Go home, take the subway, leave now."

... and now the poor widdle Pawisian high schoolers are traumatised by this unseemly eruption of reality into their privileged lives. They are taking their ball and going home. They are finished playing. Zek comments.

Hervé, one of our most faithful readers refers to it as looking for God in peoples’ faces. It’s absence is the disposition of sadness and gloom, the expression of powerlessness and a lack of free will over one’s life. I remember it vividly in the days before the Berlin Wall fell, and one sees it in the most Socialist corners of Western Europe where much is expected from government in society and very little is expected from individuals.

The one and only Valerie takes on one gloomy Gus at a time and succeeds. Way to go, Val!

Part of the nuttiness of the Jihad support network of the west (the far left) is a kind of manipulation of charitable organizations which plays into their predisposed hatred of any company which actually functions. (Property is theft!)

Imagine an organization which would slam Starbucks with the 'evil zionist' tag for donating to an organization which also happens to support soup kitchens in israel. It doesn't matter how much 'fair-trade' coffee they buy, or how many causes they support - for some reason (real reasons) the left hates Starbucks. Go figure. They'll be sure to miss this fine bit of trans-atlantic cooperation: “lazy Sunday” noisette monstreuse avec glazed donut. Truly the breakfast of champions for the pond-hopping set.